


Tomorrow's Deity

by macabre



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, M/M, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:53:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Alex sets fires and is alone until he starts hearing voices. Just one voice, actually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow's Deity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ofvanity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofvanity/gifts).



> This is a very belated birthday gift for [my mutant wife](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ofvanity). Fitting that she requested the pairing that brought us together, even after a year of fandom chasing and ship jumping.

_Alex._ He rolls his shoulders in an attempt to physically force the pleading away. _Alex, come back. Alex._

It’s the same almost every night; the same voice calling for him to return to him. The voice of a man both desperate and loved and loving. Alex hears his voice and knows he’s going mad. It’s just like the world tells him – his family, his friends, his teachers and his preacher – his sins make him the monster. He must repent. He will repent and force the disease from him.

If he can get rid of the fire, maybe he can get rid of the voice too. 

Alex is a solitary creature, always has been. He has no real friends since he hurt Ricky Verce so badly in the fourth grade that his family had to pack up and move. His mamma never leaves her knees after that day. She prays so hard for so long her knees are permanently bruised dark and mottled. His daddy spends few precious hours at home with them, and when he does walk through the door, Alex runs to his room and closes the door waiting for the lock on the outside to click.

Thirty-six seconds. That’s how long the walk takes from the front door to his room. Then he’s locked in and feels safe. His mamma always lets him out when his dad leaves, and if he had to, he can still just barely make it out the window into the backyard. 

Alex is baptized seven times by six different preachers, pastors, and reverends. He’s still waiting for a rabbi to touch his case. It’s after the sixth time when he’s seventeen that he first hears the voice. He wakes up and can’t recognize the room he’s been living in with little interruption for the past several years because his head feels like it’s been torn in half, in jagged pieces, uneven memories and feelings and being.

He doesn’t sleep for weeks because of the voice. Usually it’s asking Alex to come to him. Sometimes there are other things - _Where are you? When will you be here?_ \- and sometimes it’s just his name repeated over and over again.

“Alex. Alex, can you hear me?” It’s his mother. He sometimes doesn’t recognize her anymore. Can’t recognize her voice. Doesn’t recognize his name anymore, not when it’s the only thing he hears. 

_Alex._

He doesn’t spend a lot of time outdoors, so when he walks out his front door and keeps walking he forgets things like a jacket or wallet. He walks into a storm and through it. A trucker gives him a ride after his shoes bust open. He’s the broadest and shortest man Alex has ever seen. Hairiest too. When the man asks his name, Alex stays silent. 

He doesn’t want to hear his name from anyone else’s voice. 

The man, Logan, seems to guess a lot about him. “You’re from up north. I can smell the pine on ya. And a certain pollen – and I picked you up from outside Greensberg, which means, if I was a bettin’ man, I’d say you’re from Arlington.” 

Alex isn’t from anywhere, but he lived last in Arlington. When he shoots him a look, a burly shoulder shrugs. “Talent of mine.”

Logan drops him off in the next major city and he hands Alex a jacket of buttery leather and his number. “Stay out of trouble, kid.”

This city isn’t the largest, but it’s the largest Alex has ever been in. He’s not really sure what to do, but he trusts the voice in his head to guide him. He has to. The voice is the only thing he has. Prayers haven’t worked. It’s time to give into the godlessness, or perhaps he is hearing the voice of God himself. 

The voice tells him to hurry, so instead of taking the offer of a young man to stay with him in another part of the city, Alex declines and walks on through the night. The voice is always there now – during the day or night. Waking or sleeping. Alex is different now too. Suddenly, everything makes sense. His voice tells him exactly what to do. 

_That’s right, Alex. His name is Darwin. Accept his ride._ They drive in a yellow cab all the way from this city to the next city. Then a woman named Moira kindly buys him a meal on the train he sneaks on. She never asks his name, but lets him fall asleep on her shoulder until the voice wakes him up.

_This is your stop._ Alex quietly thanks her with a squeeze of her hand because she’s still sleeping, then creeps out into the brisk chill. It’s still at the train depot that Alex meets Angel, a girl wearing a black miniskirt even in the beginnings of winter. She raises an eyebrow at him when she catches him looking, but he says nothing. Doesn’t move. When she comes back around the front with a beaten car, she doesn’t ask him to get in. She just tells him. 

“Where you headed?” She asks. He shrugs. He hasn’t heard anything in awhile, so she ends up taking him to the club where she works. He’s sitting in a chair behind a stage wondering exactly what is happening out there, but he’s got a pretty good idea – there are plenty of scantily clad young girls around him, including Angel who bends over to change her underwear right in front of him without shame. It’s then that he sees the strange tattoo on her back – the colors seem to move right in front of him. The pinks and the purple. They glow and glisten. He’s sure they’re moving; she’s going to fly away with those strange wings inked to her back. 

“If anyone tries to give you shit for being here, just tell them you’re with me.” Then Angel is alone again, with nothing but floor shaking music to keep him company. Despite the noise, Alex is just about to doze off nestled on a pile of silk bathrobes when he hears him. 

_Alex, my sweet boy, you’re so close._

Electrified, Alex straightens up and looks around. There’s no one there. No one to help him, lead him, drive him to the next point. He stands and stumbles through the door he saw Angel leave from; when he walks out the door, the music is somehow louder and the spinning lights blinding. It seems like every eye turns to look at him, most of them men with hostile looks on their faces. A few of them have crooked grins on their faces, but the one closest to him especially looks at Alex like he’s the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen. Alex has been told this before. 

_Alex. The man with the round glasses._

This man is sitting by himself in a far corner, bobbing his head to the music but not seemingly paying any attention to anyone or anything besides Angel, who is shimmering her dark skin across a stage. Alex thinks there is something strange about the man immediately, and anyone Alex thinks is strange he knows must be widely considered extremely strange by everyone else. The man’s proportions are tall and lanky and wrong. His clothing seems a bit off, and he crosses and recrosses his legs while pointing his toes. 

Alex cautiously takes the seat next to him. Immediately the other blonde man turns to him and smiles. It’s not a comforting smile.

“So you must be Alex.” His voice is a little too high. It’s wracking his nerves. His very tired nerves. Alex nods and the other man stands up. “Come on. You’re already late.”

When Alex cranes his neck to look back at Angel, his shortly-lived friend gives him a curt nod before the guy in front of him grabs his hand and pulls him through the door. The front door this time. 

“My name is Raven. We’re going to be friends.” The man stops to take in Alex, blatantly looking him over. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be. But handsomer too.”

Then, with a short glance around their surroundings, the man shakes his shaggy blonde hair. It grows – longer and longer. His hips and chest swell, and his eye flicker gold. Her eyes. He’s a her now.

Alex takes several steps away from her. He’s mad. He’s known he’s mad for ages now, but this is something else entirely. It’s different hearing voices, but now he’s got to see things as well. He pivots hotly on his heel and stomps off. There’s nothing here for him. Nothing at all, not meant for a freak. A mad freak of nature. 

He plans to walk until he his feet break and he will bury himself. He doesn’t get far. 

“Hey!” A hand slips into his. A blue, scaly hand. “Maybe you prefer me like this.”

Now it’s a naked blue woman walking beside him. She has the reddest hair and the most yellow eyes – something fit for only a cartoon. It makes him feel loony, but he smiles anyway. 

“Charles will explain everything. I promise.” She leans forward into his ear – it’s the closest he’s ever been to a girl before, and her nakedness makes him squirm unpleasantly. “You’re not crazy,” she whispers. 

But even with the voice in his head silent for the moment, the girl next to him stays blue as they drive north. North undoubtedly has to be better than south. She tries to amuse him by shifting shapes and impersonating famous people, but Alex doesn’t know a lot of famous people. He wants to squish down the feeling of dread in his stomach that tells him things are wrong. Things are changing. 

There are cast iron gates taller than Alex can climb; they drive through them as they shut behind the car. His heart beats faster; only bad things happen in a cage. He can’t stop the twitch in his fingers.

“Alex, are you alright?” She’s shouting at him. Maybe because they’ve stopped. When did they stop? 

There’s a house. The biggest house he’s ever seen. It must be a castle – or a prison. He refuses to get out of the car, even though Raven is by the passenger door trying to coax him out. 

It’s too much – a prison made beautiful with ivy-covered walls and soft colored stone. Windows unbarred and idyllic lands. Alex won’t have it; he won’t be tricked into a docile daze of forced sanity. He knows what he is. He won’t take it. 

“Alex.” 

The world stops. Or does it move again? In focus. In time. In place. It’s his voice, the voice inside his head. His voice saying his name, but it sounds different. 

That’s because the voice isn’t in his head any longer. There’s a man sitting in a wheelchair on top of the steps watching him, smiling at him. He’s kind looking, a grey streak in his hair and all floppy clothing. His voice.

“Alex, I’m so happy you’re here.” 

“Finally.” Raven rolls her eyes. “Welcome home, Alex.” 

After kissing his cheek, she skips away into the dark archway of the castle. He is left alone, mad, mad, mad. Certainly mad.

“You’re not real.” It’s from his slightest breath. The last reserve. 

“But I am, Alex.” He rolls forward as far as possible. Alex stays frozen, half inside the car. “I’m not just inside your head.”

“But no one else can see you. She walked right past you.” Like a ghost. A blue ghost.

“Ah, yes. You see, Raven is my sister, and sometimes I think she’d like to believe I didn’t exist.” The man chuckles, leaning forward in the chair. “My is Charles Xavier. This is my home. Your home now too. “

Shaking his head, Alex stands. Dizzy. He backs away. He’ll have to walk back the way he came. Find his ground. Bury himself seven feet deep.

“Alex. Wait.” He’s been listening to his voice for so long, he can’t quite work his feet. “Come here.”

He doesn’t want to, but Alex does. He keeps his face turned down so he can’t see the blue, blue eyes, or the white hands folded over a blanketed lap. “Touch me. Know I’m real.”

The voice commands. He obeys. 

 

Alex counts the day like any prisoner – with marks and tallies. Not on the walls or anywhere someone will find them, but in the earth, so when it rains, they fade. One day he won’t need them, but for now, he thinks it’s been forty-eight days when Charles, the voice, tells him a story.

“Logan, Darwin, Angel – the people I set you with. They’re all mutants, Alex, just like you and me. We’re people with extraordinary gifts, but we’re not monsters, nor do we have a choice in our powers.

“I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you. I can only try and explain. You see, my abilities lie in telepathy. Mind control, you might say, except I never meant to control anyone. One day some years ago, I met a lovely woman named Destiny with the remarkable power of foresight of the future. Something not to be trifled with, however it was my own mistake that I read her thoughts of my own future.

“There you were. So real in her sight, that I found you in mine. I didn’t mean for you to hear me, but you did, and once I realized what I had done to you, I thought it was best to bring you here.

“Alex.” 

He jumps every time he uses his name out loud. It’s so different from hearing it in his head. It’s shallower now. No real depth to it. He is empty inside. 

“I need you to forgive me.”

Since coming to the castle, Alex has kept his distance from the people inside, including Charles, his man-not-man. This doesn’t stop the wheelchair from skirting his sides and haunting the hallways.

Alex looses words sometimes. It takes him awhile to find them again. “I don’t know how.”

“You’ll stay here. For as long as you need. And if you need to leave, you leave.” The voice keeps talking. Alex feels empty.

“I miss it in my head.”

There’s a slight pause, then _this? Do you miss me like this?_

Alex smiles, and because he doesn’t like to look, he misses Charles jumping. When he laughs, the chair wheels closer. He dares trace a finger over the scant legs under the blanket, but he doesn’t look at the godlike face. He wouldn’t dare. 

_Alex, do you understand what I’m telling you? You’re not a freak or an abomination. You’re a mutant, a human, just a slight variation of what others call normal._

There’s a pause that Alex can hear in the silence. An intake of breath, wedged right into his brain. Alex tugs at leg closest to him. 

_I’m so sorry. I made you like this._

Alex finishes smoothing out the creases in the pants then stands. It’s still early in the day and the iron gates are wide open. There are lots of roads and lots of places to be buried. He kicks up the leaves and lies under them. They’re cold and damp. He closes his eyes and imagines what it’s like alone in the dark of earth.

You saved me. He thinks this as hard as possible and hopes the man-god hears him. 

When it gets too cold, Alex walks inside the castle and finds the room they always point him to. He doesn’t like to stay in it much because it reminds him of all the days and nights he stayed locked in his old room. The leaves follow him inside, but he thinks it looks better like this. No one tells him otherwise. 

He knows it won’t be long. He’s never alone for long now. He knows the catch and pull of the chair almost as well as he knows the voice. It’s strange to be able to anticipate a god; he never could before. It was just a voice then. Now he has a body to worship too.


End file.
